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Food News Round-Up: The Mouse in the Soda Pop

by Michael Y. Park

on 01/09/12 at 04:59 PM

How Would They Have Dealt With Chocolate Lava Cakes? Overzealous TSA agents confiscated one traveller's red-velvet cupcakes because the frosting somehow violated air-safety rules, and now a funny video/song someone made of the incident has gone viral.

Speaking of which, I still want to know how that TSA agent at O'Hare Airport two years ago could possibly not know why I'd want to carry a jar of neon green back to the East Coast. Especially considering that the other TSA guys the day before laughed and let it through. What the hell, Chicago TSA? Do you how hard it is to find neon green in New York?

Mountain Dew Consumption Among Cats and Owls Has Skyrocketed: If you haven't already heard by now, Pepsi has made the unfortunate legal decision to challenge a man's claim that he found a mouse in his can of Mountain Dew by arguing that the soft drink would have already dissolved the rodent by the time he consumed it.

Call It Street Food: Illinois has passed a law allowing people to scavenge roadkill for food and fur. Think twice before asking your funny-in-the-head survivalist cousin to bring meatloaf to the next family dinner.

The Farce Is With Them: French fast-food chain Quick has introduced Star Wars-themed burgers to welcome the 3-D version of Phantom Menace. (Phantom Menace? Really?!) The most disturbing and least appetizing of their starfleet of eats is a black-bunned "Vador Burger." I tried to get friends in France to eat them and report back to me, but they refused outright on seeing the picture.

Racist or Just Ignorantly Descriptive? The Intertubes seems divided on whether a New York City Papa John's employee referring to a customer as "Lady Chinky Eyes" qualifies as downright racist or merely ill-educated. What's your opinion?

Michael, why do you have to have the Mountain Dew mouse story? You are definitely helping my resolution to drink less soda!Ugh!

crpaulk 07:42:09 PM on 01/09/12

TSA gone wild. I especially liked it a few years ago, while going through security at SeaTac in Seattle, when my granddaughter burst into tears, pointed at the TSA Agent and screamed, "THAT MAN TOOK MY SPONGE BOB TOOTHPASTE!". Everyone booed him. Dang, I wished I was faster with the camera phone.

culinarykitten 07:08:56 PM on 01/09/12

well, i was actually kind of hungry before reading this, but not now. eek all around.